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Blue Thunder
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Blue Thunder is a 1983 feature film that features a high-tech helicopter of the same name. The movie was directed by John Badham and stars Roy Scheider. A spin-off television series also entitled Blue Thunder lasted eleven episodes in 1984.
Plot synopsis
The film revolves around Francis McNeil "Frank" Murphy (Roy Scheider), a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) helicopter pilot-officer and troubled Vietnam War veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
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Encyclopedia
Blue Thunder is a 1983 feature film that features a high-tech helicopter of the same name. The movie was directed by John Badham and stars Roy Scheider. A spin-off television series also entitled Blue Thunder lasted eleven episodes in 1984.
Plot synopsis
The film revolves around Francis McNeil "Frank" Murphy (Roy Scheider), a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) helicopter pilot-officer and troubled Vietnam War veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His field partner is the newly assigned Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern in an early role), who is given the nickname "JAFO." (See following for the meaning of "JAFO.") Amid a family and employment crisis, he is selected to pilot the world's most advanced helicopter, nicknamed "Blue Thunder," which is essentially a military style combat helicopter supposedly intended for police use as a surveillance platform and for large crowd control and riot missions. With powerful armament, stealth technology that allows it to fly virtually undetected, and other accoutrements (such as infrared scanners, powerful microphones and cameras, and a U-Matic VCR), Blue Thunder appears to be a formidable tool in the war on crime that the LAPD readily accepts.
But when the death of city councilwoman Diane McNeely turns out to be more than just a random murder, Murphy begins his own covert investigation. He discovers that a subversive action group, using the acronym THOR (Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response, the "proposed use of military helicopters to quell disorder"), is intending instead to use Blue Thunder to carry out an evil mission of their own, one that involves the secret elimination of political undesirables. Murphy immediately suspects that his old nemesis from the war, former United States Army Colonel F.E. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), who has become the primary test pilot for Blue Thunder, is hiding something. After following Colonel Cochrane and using the technology on board Blue Thunder to record a meeting Cochrane has with other high-powered government officials planning to use Blue Thunder for nefarious purposes, Murphy tries to get the video tape to a television station before he is killed, as Lymangood has already been.
The final showdown between Murphy and Cochrane, who flies a cannon-equipped Hughes 500 helicopter against Blue Thunder, takes place over the skies of Los Angeles and includes an initial battle with two Air National Guard F-16 fighters. After pulling off a spectacular 360° loop-the-loop (a feat normally aerodynamically impossible for helicopters but which he accomplishes primarily through use of Blue Thunder's turbine boost function and extremely painful effort on his own part), Murphy shoots down Cochrane, then destroys Blue Thunder by landing it in front of an approaching freight train.
Production
The first draft of the screenplay for Blue Thunder featured Frank Murphy as more of a crazy main character with deeper psychological issues, who went on a rampage and destroyed a lot more of the city.
Main cast of characters
Blue Thunder helicopter
The helicopter used for Blue Thunder was a French-made Aérospatiale SA-341G Gazelle modified with bolt-on parts and an Apache-style canopy. Two helicopters were used in the filming of the movie in case one was grounded for maintenance issues. The helicopters were purchased by Columbia Pictures and flown to Cinema Air in Carlsbad, CA where they were heavily modified for the film. Unfortunately, these alterations made the helicopters so heavy that various tricks had to be employed to make it look fast and agile in the film. For instance, the 360° loop-the-loop maneuver Murphy performs at the end of the film was carried out by a radio controlled model.
The two SA-341Gs were S/N 1066 (ex-) and S/N 1075 (ex-) and were produced in 1973. After the film was made, the helicopter was sold to Mike Groovy, an aviation salvage collector in Clovis, New Mexico. Groovy then leased it out to a film company that was filming Amerika, an ABC mini-series about Soviet occupation of the United States. For this production, the helicopters were painted black, and the surveillance microphones were stripped away. After Groovy got the helicopter back, it was dismantled and sold for parts.
makes a brief appearance in the pilot episode of the TV show MacGyver near the 16 minute mark.
Cultural references
- JAFO - just another fucking observer; which is police community jargon (actually an acronym) mentioned repeatedly in the film in reference to the helicopter's non-pilot second officer, in this case Daniel Stern's character of Richard Lymangood, before he is murdered.
See also
External links
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